Yesteryear
100 years ago
For sometime past J.D. Steenken has had his eye on a Christmas tree that just met his idea of what a Christmas tree should be. He asked permission of the owner of the tree to cut it down and permission was granted. On Monday, Mr. Steenken went to get the tree and he found it gone. Someone had cut it down without permission and Mr. Steenken had to look elsewhere for a tree.
The young folks of the Middletown Village are having a fine time skating on J. Dey Conover’s pond. At night they build bonfires, and a number of older people enjoy the sport.
Mrs. E.A. Palmer, who lives between Navesink and Atlantic Highlands, saw a hawk grappling with one of her chickens last Thursday. She loaded a double-barrel gun that was in the house and fired at the hawk. The hawk was crippled but it was able to fly to a tree. It stayed in the tree only a few seconds and as it started to fly away Mrs. Palmer brought it down with the second barrel of the gun.
A goose chanced off last week by Frank Wilson of Belford was won by Mrs. Charles Brown. Mrs. Brown’s chance cost her one cent.
Crows are commonly said to live for a hundred years, and turtles are reported to have even longer life, but if the late Professor Baird is right, the greatest amount of longevity is possessed by fishes. Professor Baird once said that as a fish has no maturity, there is nothing to prevent it from living indefinitely and growing continually. He cited in proof a pike in Russia whose age is known to date back to the 15th century. In the Royal aquarium at St. Petersburg there are hundreds of fish that were in over 150 years ago.
For a number of years past there has been a feeling among some of the people of Red Bank that the town should be incorporated as a city of the second class. Some of the people who want the town to be incorporated into a city want this done because a city government will provide many more good paying offices than the town affords. Others probably desire a city government because of that general desire for a change which seems to be one of the fundamental characteristics of the human mind; but most of those who advocate a change of government do so because they honestly believe the town will be benefited thereby.